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If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao. Reminds me of Richard Hamming talking about his profess
by cushychicken 5y ago
If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao.
Reminds me of Richard Hamming talking about his professional envy of John Tukey:
One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!
From "You and Your Research": https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
- paulpauper 5y agoRemidns me of the 'cheat code' of reading a chapter ahead
- TrackerFF 5y agoTIL Bode, Hamming, Shannon, Tukey, et. al all worked at Bell Labs around the same time. Wonder what the culture must've been like, those are all household names in signal processing, control, information theory.
- spenczar5 5y agoRichard Hamming wrote a book, "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering", which - despite its name - is more or less a memoir of his own scientific career. It's a fun read if you're interested in that culture.
- breck 5y agoBest book I've read in a long while. I hope to reread every few years.
- yesenadam 5y agoFrom the preface, "After many years of pressure and encouragement from friends, I decided to write up the graduate course in engineering I teach at the U.S.Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. ...In this series of lectures I try to communicate to students what cannot be said in words—the essence of style in science and engineering. ...I have found that the personal story is far, far more effective than the impersonal one; hence there is necessarily an aura of “bragging” in the book that is unavoidable." You can watch him giving that 31-lecture course in 1995 here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 Enjoy! It's wonderful. (The last lecture is the famous "You and Your Research" that he gave many times.) I've really enjoyed his books too, from Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers to Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics. They're all drenched with experience.
- yesenadam 5y agoSorry, this version of the same lectures has better video quality: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLctkxgWNSR89bl7hTOS3F3wuoGj7id3Xy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLctkxgWNSR89bl7hTOS3F...
- cushychicken 5y agoI did a double take the first time I read that passage from YAYR because I'd never properly realized that: 1. Bode was a person 2. He was alive in the past 100 years Tukey was a legit fucking genius.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago> If there's anyone I'll listen respectfully to about the value of hard, diligent work, it's Terence Tao. Why? He is a genius, and most of us aren't geniuses.
- vymague 5y agoIkr. The advice doesn't sound that convincing coming from the smartest man alive.
- hycaria 5y agoHe wrote eloquently about one of his failures in grad school iirc because he simply didn’t work enough nor seriously enough. Even though he is a genius there is quite a lot of work required.
- abhayhegde 5y agoHey, are you talking about this article: https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202007/rnoti-p1007.pdf https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202007/rnoti-p1007.pdf?
- hycaria 5y agoI remember another page formatting but the text looks similar enough to my recalling so I'd say yes!